Tomasz Olejnik, CEE General Manager of Public Sector at AWS

Could you tell us about the company's plans and further business development strategy in the CEE region?

AWS recognizes the immense potential in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. We are focused on expanding our presence and capabilities to empower organizations across industries with innovative cloud services that drive digital transformation, agility, and growth. Our strategy involves tailoring offerings to meet the unique needs of customers in each market while investing in critical infrastructure like data centers to better serve this dynamic region.

What competitive advantages, in your opinion, distinguish Amazon Web Services from other market players today?

Customers have come to appreciate that the AWS culture is truly distinct from others in the industry. When organizations are selecting a long-term infrastructure partner, they want to understand what makes a provider unique – and AWS stands out in several key areas. First and foremost, we are relentlessly focused on our customers. Rather than being competitor-driven, 90% of what we build stems directly from customer feedback, and we continually strive to invent on their behalf, reading between the lines to anticipate their evolving needs.

Additionally, AWS maintains a pioneering spirit that sets us apart. While many large technology companies have lost their appetite for ground-up innovation, instead acquiring most of their new capabilities, we embrace a builder mentality. We hire talented individuals who are driven to reinvent flawed customer experiences rather than simply replicating or acquiring existing solutions. In the rapidly evolving cloud space, our ability to quickly iterate and introduce new functionality from the ground up is incredibly valuable.

Finally, AWS is uniquely focused on building relationships and a business designed to endure for decades. Our customers will never find us pressuring them into short-term deals at the end of a quarter or year. Instead, we prioritize doing right by our customers consistently over the long haul, with the goal of cultivating lasting partnerships built on exceptional service and trust. This long-term orientation resonates with organizations looking for a cloud provider they can depend on for years to come.

Which countries' markets, in your opinion, are the most promising?

Across the Central and Eastern European region, we see immense potential for growth and digital transformation. While it's difficult to single out any particular market as most promising, given the unique strengths and requirements of each country, a few stand out for their robust digital economies and forward-thinking approaches to technology adoption.

Poland, Greece, the Czech Republic and Romania are certainly among the markets poised for significant growth, driven by their mature digital infrastructures and receptiveness to innovative solutions. However, we are equally excited about the opportunities in countries like Kazakhstan and Armenia, where we see a strong appetite for cloud adoption and a willingness to embrace cutting-edge technologies.

Our focus extends across the entire CEE region, as we recognize the distinct characteristics and needs of each market. For instance, in Ukraine, we have been actively supporting efforts to safeguard the country's data and digital infrastructure, preserving its present and building a foundation for its future resilience.

Regardless of the market, our commitment remains steadfast – to empower organizations of all sizes and across industries with the tools, services, and expertise they need to drive innovation, enhance competitiveness, and unlock new growth avenues in the digital age.

Does the structure of cloud services in Central and Eastern Europe differ from, for example, Western Europe?

The cloud services landscape in CEE is rapidly evolving, much like other European regions. However, we recognize that adoption rates and specific requirements may vary across sectors and countries within CEE. Our approach is to understand and cater to the unique needs of each market while leveraging our global expertise and capabilities.

How do you assess the readiness of the market and customers in Central and Eastern Europe to switch to cloud services?

We are witnessing an increasing readiness among organizations in CEE to embrace cloud solutions as they recognize the benefits of scalability, cost-efficiency, and agility. While adoption rates may vary, the overall demand for cloud services continues to surge across the region as businesses seek to drive innovation and stay competitive in the digital age.

Considering the vast geography of the countries in which you operate, where do you see the greatest growth dynamics in the coming years?

Given the diverse geography of CEE, we anticipate strong growth dynamics across the region. However, some markets may experience more rapid adoption due to factors such as digital maturity, economic conditions, and regulatory environments. Our focus remains on delivering consistent, high-quality services to customers throughout CEE while adapting to local market needs.

What products and technologies does AWS plan to focus on in the coming year?

We're witnessing a tectonic shift towards cloud adoption, driven primarily by the cost savings and agility it provides. The cloud enables organizations to avoid the substantial capital expenditures and operational overhead associated with building and managing their data centers. With AWS, customers can focus solely on developing and managing their workloads, paying only for the resources they consume as a variable expense. A Hackett Group study found that by migrating on-premises workloads to AWS, customers can lower IT costs by an average of 20% and significantly reduce time-to-market for new features or functionality by an average of 43%, with many achieving reductions of over 60%.

While cost is often the initial catalyst for cloud adoption, the true game-changer is the agility and speed with which organizations can transform their customer experiences. Provisioning infrastructure on-premises can take weeks or months, but in the cloud, customers can access over 200 AWS services and spin up thousands of servers in minutes, enabling them to go from idea to implementation at an unparalleled pace.

Additionally, AWS is doubling down on emerging technologies like generative AI, which is poised to revolutionize virtually every industry. Amazon has invested heavily in AI and machine learning for over 25 years, and AWS has helped more than 100,000 customers innovate using these capabilities. Generative AI, in particular, is one of the most transformational technologies of our generation, tackling complex problems, augmenting human performance, and maximizing productivity. AWS is the best, easiest, and most performant platform for building generative AI applications, offering customers access to the most popular and advanced foundation models.

As the pace of innovation accelerates, AWS remains committed to empowering customers with the cutting-edge services, tools, and infrastructure they need to stay ahead of the curve, drive innovation, and deliver exceptional experiences.

How does AWS facilitate change and transformation in public sector organizations?

AWS is dedicated to empowering public sector organizations through secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud solutions. We understand the unique challenges faced by government institutions, healthcare providers, and educational organizations and institutions, and we work closely with them to address their specific requirements.

It includes ensuring data sovereignty, enhancing citizen services, enabling innovative research and development, and providing tailored services like AWS GovCloud for sensitive workloads. Our broad portfolio, combined with our expertise in the public sector, positions us as a trusted partner for driving digital transformation.

What can the company offer to organizations in areas such as healthcare or education?

AWS offers a comprehensive suite of solutions tailored to the unique needs of healthcare and education organizations. In the healthcare domain, we provide secure, compliant services like AWS Healthcare Cloud and powerful analytics tools that enable better patient outcomes and drive operational efficiencies. Our offering is further enhanced by cutting-edge services like Amazon Transcribe Medical, a speech-to-text service optimized for the healthcare industry, and AWS HealthScribe, a groundbreaking AI capability that transforms medical consultations.

AWS HealthScribe leverages conversational and generative AI to transcribe patient-physician conversations and generate clinical notes, delivering actionable insights to aid clinicians in their documentation process. HealthScribe is designed to be an assistive tool that complements clinicians' expertise.

In the education sector, our services facilitate remote learning, enabling seamless collaboration between students and faculty and providing cost-effective computing resources for academic pursuits. Importantly, our cloud technologies empower healthcare and education innovators to develop game-changing applications by leveraging the power of AI, machine learning, and data analytics.

Overall, AWS aims to be a strategic partner for these vital sectors, helping them overcome challenges, drive innovation, and unlock new possibilities through our comprehensive, secure, and cutting-edge cloud solutions.

To what extent are technologies such as IoT or AI used in AWS solutions today?

Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are increasingly integrated into AWS solutions across industries. Our IoT services enable customers to collect, process, and analyze data from billions of connected devices, driving efficiency and innovation. AWS IoT Core, IoT Device Defender, and IoT Device Management provide a single pane of glass for customers to monitor and manage their smart devices from the cloud.

Our AI and machine learning services, like Amazon SageMaker, allow customers to build, train, and deploy models quickly, leveraging our proven infrastructure and tools. IoT and AI are central to many AWS solutions we deliver today, from predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization to personalized learning and medical imaging analysis.

Moreover, the advent of inexpensive computer chips and high-bandwidth telecommunication has led to billions of devices being connected to the internet. Everyday objects like toothbrushes, vacuums, cars, and machines can now use sensors to collect data and respond intelligently to users. The cloud plays a crucial role in supplementing these devices, which typically have limited processing power and storage.

Most major IoT applications built in recent years have been developed using AWS to complement the edge devices. Customers can connect and operate devices at the edge with FreeRTOS and AWS IoT Greengrass while continually monitoring and managing them from the cloud. AWS provides a seamless programming interface, enabling customers to decide what processing and analytics to perform in the cloud and what to do on the device itself, eliminating round-trip latency.

By bringing together ML and IoT, AWS enables customers to build more intelligent devices, totally transforming what's possible. Companies like LG Electronics, Woodside Energy, Bayer Crop Science, iRobot, Moderna Therapeutics, Philips, Siemens, Volkswagen, and Carrier are among those building their IoT solutions on AWS.

What does the ideal multi-cloud infrastructure of a customer look like from the AWS perspective?

We believe that the multi-region approach is far more effective and cost-effective for customers that need availability beyond what can be achieved by a single AWS Region. Multi-cloud forces teams to learn and be fluent with multiple infrastructure platforms (which development teams hate and are wasteful in terms of cost and people resource-wise) and exposes customers to a larger variety of operational complexities. Customers considering multi-cloud for Disaster Recovery or improved availability should first look at their ability to achieve their business needs by leveraging multiple AWS Regions. Multi-Region resilience provides development and operations teams with a common set of infrastructure tools and capabilities while also providing customers with pricing leverage through volume discounts that cannot be achieved in multi-cloud environments.

Some customers pursue geographic diversity, but few do because they correctly calculate that the higher cost significantly outweighs the infrequency of events that require geographic diversity. That said, customers with very high availability requirements are able to use AWS across multiple Regions to provide resiliency against issues like this. We've worked hard over the past several years to make it easier for customers to operate across AWS Regions, including features like Cross-Region Replication.

How are the requirements for the protection of personal data and banking information ensured for customers in Central and Eastern Europe?

Protecting customer data is an utmost priority for AWS, and we have implemented robust measures to ensure compliance with relevant data protection regulations in Central and Eastern Europe, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other regional and local laws. Our services are designed with security and privacy at the core, featuring encryption at rest and in transit, comprehensive access controls, and auditing capabilities. We also offer specialized services like AWS PrivateLink, enabling customers to access AWS services over a private connection, ensuring data remains within their trusted network.

Amazon and AWS are vigilant about our customers' privacy and have implemented sophisticated technical and physical measures to prevent unauthorized access. We have a world-class team of security experts monitoring our systems 24/7 to protect customer content. We will not disclose customer content in response to requests unless required to do so to comply with a legally valid and binding order, such as a subpoena or a court order. Additionally, we would notify the customer before disclosing their content so they could seek protection from disclosure unless prohibited by law.

It's crucial to highlight that customers can choose to encrypt their content as part of a standard security process for highly sensitive data. AWS provides tools customers can use to encrypt their data at rest or in motion, or customers can choose from a number of supported third-party security solutions. Content that has been encrypted is rendered useless without the applicable decryption keys.

One of AWS's main benefits is its global footprint, enabling customers to deploy globally within minutes. As customers increasingly operate in multiple AWS regions to cater to their global customer base, we're launching more features that make it easier for them to operate in multiple regions while retaining control over where their data is stored. Features like S3 Cross-Region Replication and EC2's Cross-Region AMI Copy empower customers to operate globally while maintaining complete ownership and consent over their data movement between regions.

What additional capabilities and benefits does AWS European Sovereign Cloud provide for customers in Central and Eastern Europe?

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is designed to meet the specific data protection and security requirements of customers in the European region, including CEE. It provides additional layers of control and ensures data residency within the EU, helping organizations comply with stringent regulations.

Key benefits include dedicated infrastructure, end-to-end oversight and auditing capabilities, and certified cloud services tailored for highly regulated industries like government, finance, healthcare, and defense. By leveraging the European Sovereign Cloud, customers in CEE can confidently adopt cloud solutions while meeting their most demanding data sovereignty and compliance needs.

How do you rate the opportunities for effective use of content delivery network (CDN) solutions by customers in Central and Eastern Europe?

We see significant opportunities for customers in CEE to leverage content delivery network (CDN) solutions effectively. AWS offers a global CDN service, Amazon CloudFront, which delivers content with low latency and high data transfer speeds, optimizing performance for end-users across the region's diverse geography.

As more businesses and organizations in CEE shift to digital platforms and online services, the need for reliable and efficient content delivery becomes paramount. CDN solutions can help ensure seamless experiences for customers, employees, and stakeholders, regardless of their location within the region.

In your opinion, what are the most important factors for partner success?

In my view, the most critical factors for partner success revolve around a relentless focus on delivering exceptional customer value. It encompasses several key elements: a shared commitment to customer excellence across the partnership, deep technical expertise in AWS services and solutions, and a collaborative mindset built on trust and transparency.

However, what truly distinguishes top-performing partners is their ability to stay intimately connected to customers, developing a nuanced understanding of their unique needs, challenges, and objectives. The ideal partner acts as an extension of the customer's team, leveraging their local market knowledge and AWS expertise to create tailored, high-value solutions that drive tangible business outcomes.

Successful partners are those who can strike the perfect balance – combining a customer-centric approach, a willingness to innovate and adapt, and the capability to deliver specialized, outcome-driven solutions. They don't just provide technology; they become trusted advisors, strategic guides, and catalysts for their customers' digital transformation journeys.

Ultimately, partners who can seamlessly integrate these factors – deep AWS competency, local market insights, a consultative mindset, and a laser focus on creating added value for customers – are best positioned for long-term success in the dynamic cloud ecosystem.

MUK Group of Companies has signed a distribution contract with AWS in several countries: Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia and Ukraine. What are your expectations from this partnership?

We are excited about our partnership with MUK Group of Companies and have high expectations for the value it will bring to customers across these markets. MUK's local expertise, combined with AWS's global cloud capabilities, creates a powerful combination that can drive cloud adoption and innovation in these regions.

We expect this partnership to accelerate digital transformation by providing customers with access to AWS services, technical support, and tailored solutions that address their unique business needs.